Suggestions on Shatterplay

I wanted some feedback or advice on how to counter cleave comps involving hunter & Feral/Ret as playing shatterplay(mage/spriest/rshaman, atm playing at 2100-2300 mmr).

It seems their initial opener(without cds) is enough for me to use Ancestral Swiftness, heal, healing tide. But the problem is their ccs.

In the opener they get my shadowpriest down to 12%, while I am sitting in silence shot, scatter trap and cyclone. If i trinket that i get stunned, by the feral then a fear(tremor), then another cyclone. I don't want an early disperse but it seems that if he doesn't he usually dies.

We have managed to survive well against Ret but with feral it seems extremely difficult.

We have good damage, but it takes time for the priest to ramp it up. Our usual kill target is hunter, but we do switch it to Feral depending on how well the hunter is surviving. Also, my hex's are quite useless as the feral decurses them immediately. As soon as the feral opens I incapacitate him(panda racial). Then he he eats a fear, this usually puts him in los from his healer. We do take advantage of the opportunity but he just dashes away and is right back topped off.

Also, it seems extremely difficult to heal through their burst even if they are overlapping ccs.

Is there a different approach? maybe kill the hunters pet(if BM) in a shatter? or open up on priest? or am I simply out of luck since I am a rshaman ...

In the opener they get my shadowpriest down to 12%, while I am sitting in silence shot, scatter trap and cyclone.

^Right here is where you're going wrong. Your positioning is bad if you're always sitting in a scatter trap on the opener and your teammates aren't doing anything to help.

There are ways to stop scatter/trap, make use of them.

Instant cyclone is definitely not easy to avoid, but considering you have 3 offensive dispels you can also try just spam purging the feral while he's using energy/finishing moves. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=16974 is a magic buff.

Also I would suggest focusing on the Hunter's pet not the Hunter. This allows you to poly the hunter on the opener. Combine this with fear on the feral and only 1 can be dispelled. Poly 3x will always slow down the hunter. If he Bestial Wrath's a poly (almost guaranteed), deep the pet and blow it up.

Stay behind pillars so that they need to overextend to get on your priest. If your priest is behind a pillar it shouldn't be hard for you to be in range of the enemy healer (assuming he wants to actually heal his partners). When your priest fears the feral, THAT'S when you hex the healer.

Once the pet is dead, sit the hunter and properly cycle your interrupts on his pet res. Note that you can still use interrupts while he's in deterrence.

Bye again! This game isn't fun when you don't know anyone else that still plays.

Tell your spr to eat traps ie. psyfiend md grip and manually eating it. Have the spr line the hunter and hit the feral or ret behind the pillar while being trained. If you do that vs jungle, try and fear the hunter during deep cs on the feral / healer. Vice versa, if the hunter doesnt have a trinket and/or BM you can hit him with deep / cs / fear on feral. It all depends on positioning. For hexes, pom polly/cs healer hex hunter deep druid, just cross CC to make sure the druid doesnt dispell it. Tbh the comp is weaker with a resto shaman.

I will ask my spriest to stay behind pillar as he does over extends a bit

fant0m8, on 12 July 2013 - 08:48 PM, said:

^Right here is where you're going wrong. Your positioning is bad if you're always sitting in a scatter trap on the opener and your teammates aren't doing anything to help.

There are ways to stop scatter/trap, make use of them.

Instant cyclone is definitely not easy to avoid, but considering you have 3 offensive dispels you can also try just spam purging the feral while he's using energy/finishing moves.

Also I would suggest focusing on the Hunter's pet not the Hunter. This allows you to poly the hunter on the opener. Combine this with fear on the feral and only 1 can be dispelled. Poly 3x will always slow down the hunter. If he Bestial Wrath's a poly (almost guaranteed), deep the pet and blow it up.

Stay behind pillars so that they need to overextend to get on your priest. If your priest is behind a pillar it shouldn't be hard for you to be in range of the enemy healer (assuming he wants to actually heal his partners). When your priest fears the feral, THAT'S when you hex the healer.

Once the pet is dead, sit the hunter and properly cycle your interrupts on his pet res. Note that you can still use interrupts while he's in deterrence.

I agree, if we can get a kill on his pet it will help us significantly. I usually purge the feral as soon as he gets NS, but he always have either 2-3 or more buffs on him, i guess i just have to get better on my purges.

watchmepwn, on 12 July 2013 - 09:19 PM, said:

the ideal situation:
POM ring arround the SP&Shaman (with alter) pom priest -- if feral didnt get caught in pom ring: fear him. He most likely trinket (if so; deep) else deep hunter and hurt him like hell. Silence priest early to make sure the hunter uses his detterence.

Now with this situation, you completelty turned the opener arround. You still got all of your cooldowns and you're on the lead with the hunterkill.

This is a definitely new approach i hadn't thought about. My only fear is them switching to me . But this will make it so that i don't get trapped easily. Fear feral/ pom poly or i can instant hex the priest leaving the mage to get a poly on hunter, which will give us tremendous control and then we can line a silence or blanked cs on disc and then a fear, while bursting the feral.

Fatbelly, on 12 July 2013 - 09:22 PM, said:

Tell your spr to eat traps ie. psyfiend md grip and manually eating it. Have the spr line the hunter and hit the feral or ret behind the pillar while being trained. If you do that vs jungle, try and fear the hunter during deep cs on the feral / healer. Vice versa, if the hunter doesnt have a trinket and/or BM you can hit him with deep / cs / fear on feral. It all depends on positioning. For hexes, pom polly/cs healer hex hunter deep druid, just cross CC to make sure the druid doesnt dispell it. Tbh the comp is weaker with a resto shaman.

The key point I see among these posts is that the priest should be pretty much next to me and losing the enemy healer so that the feral is in a bad position to burst. Most of the time my spriest is out in the middle and I think that's what is causing me to eat hunter cc.

Also, him being out causes the enemy team to lavishly do Dps while having no worries of lining their own healer.

Thanks for the input guys! I will apply this today, will let you know how it went!

This is a definitely new approach i hadn't thought about. My only fear is them switching to me . But this will make it so that i don't get trapped easily. Fear feral/ pom poly or i can instant hex the priest leaving the mage to get a poly on hunter, which will give us tremendous control and then we can line a silence or blanked cs on disc and then a fear, while bursting the feral.

I would not suggest that feral is the best target to kill. I would say hunter should be your maintarget to kill.

Something I didn't see anyone mention here is that if you are facing a junglecleave, its better for your shadow priest to stand on top of your healer for traps etc, and have your mage push out to cc the opposing teams' healer, whereas if you are playing vs ret/hunter/disc, its probably better to have your mage stand on at least the initial trap as blinding light will cause you problems. Also, if your spriest isn't taking divine star, I would definitely recommend it. The amount of offhealing spriests can still do in order to keep themselves alive is surprisingly good, and divine star adds to this greatly.